Moving to South America and Starting a Web Development Agency - Good or Bad Idea?

[Tritton]

I am temporarily moving to Argentina and leaving my career as a financial analyst to pivot into web dev.

Here's the plan:

My goal is to start a web dev agency while I am there. The aim is to serve Canadian/North American clients that will pay me in dollars while my expenses are in pesos. I myself am from Canada, if that matters.

My plan is to grow my clientele and build enough recurring revenue while I am there so that in a year or two I can return to Canada with enough funds and enough monthly income to live the same lifestyle that I currently have. The rationale is that I will be benefitting from significantly lower overhead costs as I grow said clientele than I would if I were to stay here.

The main hurdle that I can think of is that landing clients while abroad will be even more challenging than if I were to be in the same space as them. I'm not sure how willing potential clients would be to getting into a professional relationship with someone they have never met face to face. To mitigate this, I will be focusing on structuring my pricing using a subscription model to lower the perceived risk from my clients' perspective. Meaning that if they don't have to pay for the whole website upfront they will be more open to hiring my services.

Besides client acquisition, the other thing that will be tricky is going to be doing this in a tax-efficient and legal way. I will consult with a CPA to figure out how this can be done.

Thoughts?

 

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[DoWhatWorks]

Hofstadter's Law things will always take longer than you'd expect.

If you can I would suggest starting the web dev agency and landing a few clients now who will continue to pay you while in Argentina. You also get the benefit of the easier sale/commanding higher prices while being based in North America.

You can still do this in Argentina but it may be harder as they'll know you have cheaper living expenses. So getting that initial sales/closing experience will be invaluable.

Starting a business from scratch is hard enough, let alone while settling in a new country.

 

[StrikingViper69]

Why would your clients know you’re in Argentina? Or care?

 

[Tritton]

Hofstadter's Law things will always take longer than you'd expect.

If you can I would suggest starting the web dev agency and landing a few clients now who will continue to pay you while in Argentina. You also get the benefit of the easier sale/commanding higher prices while being based in North America.

You can still do this in Argentina but it may be harder as they'll know you have cheaper living expenses. So getting that initial sales/closing experience will be invaluable.

Starting a business from scratch is hard enough, let alone while settling in a new country.

Initially, I was planning on spending the first couple of months learning how to actually do web development, but I think that you are absolutely right. I should be spending all my free time learning and shortening that learning and development phase so I can get to the business end of things faster.

 

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[Tritton]

Why would your clients know you’re in Argentina? Or care?

I have never done sales. I would imagine that clients would be interested in meeting the person making the website. I will do more research on web dev client acquisition because I'm clearly not knowledgable enough.